A New Lease on Life Sidestory: Blocked
by Ghost-of-a-Chance-13
Summary: Ghost has writer's block, and when she has writer's block, bad things happen. Now, Donatello is trapped in her world with no way home. One thing's for certain: she needs to get him home before he figures out she's responsible for all the drama his family has dealt with. NOT a serious story - this self-insert parody is meant to break through writer's block without a sledge-hammer.
1. The Consequences of Writers' Block

_Well, Folks, I've got major writers' block and haven't been able to update A New Lease on Life or Gallery of Memories as often as I'd prefer. When this happens, sometimes I try odd methods of coping...this is one of those odd coping methods. Introducing Writers' Block, an SI-parody starring yours truly, my crazy family, and a certain brainy turtle who has no idea what he's stepped in._

 _Installments for this will probably be random, not in any particular order, and may be long, short, or anywhere between. There's an overall warning for parody, language, suggestive language and situations, and a completely pathetic SI character who actually represents the SI person! Who'd'a thought, huh? Dedicated to the fuzzbutts: Heiferlump Chance and Woozle Thomas._

 _ **Warnings** for language, honest and 'non-badassed' self-insert, suggestiveness, and some drama-slash-angsty-moments._

* * *

 **1: The Repercussions of Writers' Block  
**

What started out like any other day would soon become like no other day; of course, by the time Ghost Chance realized this, she would be too busy questioning her sanity to remark on how bizarre that day turned out.

"Dammit, Heifer!" the overweight brunette hollered. An equally overweight blonde tabby bolted across the overgrown yard with all the grace of a pregnant buffalo. Deep green eyes scowled behind wire framed glasses, and she blew a loose wisp of mid-brown hair out of her face. "Heiferlump, ya bloody jail-breakin' moose, git back here!" Of course, hollering at a cat yearning for freedom never results in said cat actually obeying. This one fact has never changed, especially for Heiferlump, the feline known affectionately as Heifer. Resigned to chasing down the stubborn animal, Ghost let the door slam and took off after the errant feline.

Summer was almost over in her little corner of the Missouri Ozarks, but the humid heat was nowhere near through…and heat was _never_ kind to those with extra insulation. By the time she made it down the steps of the porch and halfway to her crazed cat, Ghost was already dripping with sweat and struggling to breathe the heavy, humid air. _Bloody asthma._ Just on the other side of the fence and right at the property line, Heifer paused, staring out into the wooded area beyond with one paw poised for bolting. "Whoa-no," Ghost warned her quickening her steps to a clumsy half-sprint. "Don't you _dare,_ Lil'—" Despite the warning, Heifer bolted out into the woods, her striped tail and dirty backside vanishing in the bracken. _"Guch_. Figures."

Grumbling under her breath—mostly oaths, expletives, and unflattering remarks about the cat's genetic origins and hygienic behaviors—the irate woman trudged out the gate and into the overgrown scrub brush. Every few yards, she hollered out the Heifer's name or one of her many frequently used 'pet names,' then listened for a telltale jingle from the cat's collar. Finally, success. "Gotcha!" Ghost's hands latched onto the fat cat panting for breath barely twenty yards from the house. "Nice try, _Scatface_ —no one escapes _Hellcatraz."_ Already, Heifer began her usual habit of regaling 'Mommy' with all the amazing things she saw in her short escape, all in a surprising range of vocalizations and intonations. _Noisy moose._

At that moment, she realized something worrisome…the forest, normally full of racket, was quiet…too quiet. She wasn't alone. Green eyes darted back and forth among the trees for a sign of the intruder. She shifted Heiferlump to one wide hip, cradling the obliviously purring cat around the middle like a fuzzy handbag while still supporting the feline's flabby rib cage. She backed toward the property line again, carefully watching for any sign of company.

She knew moving out to that area was a risk—knew it was dangerous to live so close to the train tracks cutting through the river bottoms hidden in the secluded tree stand. If she screamed for help, it wasn't likely that anyone would hear her. Despite that risk, though, she and her husband Cold couldn't turn the house down. It had everything they wanted and needed, and because of a single albeit bloody day in its past, the price couldn't be beaten. She'd lived in a haunted house before, after all; if the double homicide left behind any unsavory paranormal residue, it would still be a cakewalk compared to her childhood home. Any other day, Ghost wouldn't have batted an eye about living in such a secluded area; now, she found herself terrified that decision was about to bite her in the ass.

"Excuse me." An entirely unflattering shriek ripped from her lungs and she whirled about, Heifer launching from her arms as one shot up to sock her would-be attacker in the groin. Instead, Ghost felt like she'd punched a wall and fell backward onto her over-plump behind with an incoherent cry of pain. The strange man simply stared at her.

Wait. Still cradling her throbbing hand, she blinked in disbelief up at the being standing above her. The stranger held Heiferlump to one bulky shoulder, the little green-eyed monster already purring up a storm. Hold. The. Phone. Hazel eyes, tortoise shell rimmed glasses, _totally_ sexy coveralls and suspenders, violet bandana mask… Ghost blinked again, struggling to process the sight before her…a very familiar mutant turtle, clearly questioning her sanity, and holding Heiferlump like the cat's bewildered mama didn't just try to nut-shot him.

"The _fuck?"_ One bare eyebrow arching under his mask and his nose wrinkling slightly, Donatello scrutinized her silently. Ghost cringed. Why was it so much easier to _write_ a good first impression than to _make_ one? "Uh…hi?"

"Hi." It wasn't much consolation, but he seemed just as confused by her presence as she was by his. Of course, in his world, this sort of thing wasn't exactly uncommon; her world was an entirely different story. Growing up in an actual haunted house taught Ghost that no one believed in mysteries anymore, even the ones that weren't quite so far-fetched. "I take it this is yours?" As though knowing she was being talked about, Heifer gave him a loud half-purr-half-meow, then turned to shoot her owner a smug grin.

"Yeah." Ghost fought the urge to return Heifer's 'smirk' with some immature expression and instead focused on the three fingered hand scratching the cat's white cheeks. "Just took the trash out…she's a runner." Another 'wuuuROWurrr' from Heifer made Donnie smirk. Smacking the cat hair off his unoccupied hand, he offered it to the woman still flat on her ass in the leaf litter. It took a moment—and another arched eyebrow—but finally she managed to goose her mental hamster into doing its job. He hauled her upright like she weighed nothing, but clearly didn't expect her to nearly topple over front-first once she was on her feet.

"Are you alright?" Ghost leaned against the nearest tree with a hiss and grimace; spasms shot through her right leg from the knee outward, reminding her she'd overdone it that day. If only it didn't take a mere few hours of basic housework to constitute 'overdoing it…'

"Yeah, just gimme a sec." Fingertips digging into her knee, she easily located the familiar dent in her tibia; the landmark found, she traced straight upward then followed the line of her kneecap around to the spasming nerve cluster there. "Anyone ever offers to park a car on your ass, decline."

"I take it you didn't?" A telltale smirk tilted his lips upward at one side, and hers soon echoed the expression.

"You're only young an' dumb once, right?" she teased. The pain passed, she reached out for the cat still telling Donatello all about herself in a multitude of purrs and meows. "I'll take that lump from ya. C'mon in out'a the heat—we ain't had neighbors in a bit, but this weather'll kill ya."

Almost as soon as the two were inside—with Heiferlump crated for a time-out—Ghost led him to a cramped and shabby, if clean, kitchen, directing him to the half-full coffee pot and the microwave. "It's a day old," she admitted digging a coffee mug out for him, "but it's still good—had some 'is'mornin'." While she was pointing out the locations of the coffee fixings, a low, sad yowl rang through the air. _"Woozle,"_ she called out dryly, "yer not _lost_. Quitcher lyin' a'ready."

"Woozle?" Donnie echoed dubiously, but before he could add to the question, a flash of white and ginger fur bolted in from the hallway. Winding eagerly around Ghost's bare legs was a second, slightly less obese cat—white with bright reddish orange splotches and vibrant copper orange eyes.

"Woozle," Ghost affirmed with a grin, hoisting the chubby cat up into her arms. "Y'already met Heiferlump, this's her brother, Woozle." After a mere moment of 'Mommy time,' the ginger cat decided he'd had enough and fussed to be put down. "Yeah, yeah, screw you too, ya lil' rodent," she teased depositing the squirming cat on the floor. After a send-off from Ghost—a teasing pat on the butt—he galloped off to parts unknown, yodeling a battle cry. After digging through a low cabinet, she emerged triumphantly with a bottle of Drambuie and glass tumbler and poured herself a good three fingers worth. The familiar scent made Donnie still in preparing his coffee, eyes rolling toward her in blatant disbelief. The brunette fished a curled sliver of orange rind from a small bin from the freezer, plopping it into her glass with an odd smile.

At first, Donatello was bewildered at the sudden change in scenery and worried the strange woman hurt herself lashing out at him; now he could see a faint resemblance. Her frizzy brown hair was only greying lightly—mostly at the hairline with plenty of grey shot through her eyebrows—and the lot was piled into a sloppy braided bun instead of tied back in two neat braids. Her eyes were a muted blue-green, not pale grey-green. Awkwardly tanned skin was decked with hordes of freckles and broken by numerous ambiguous scars, and her body type was clearly well beyond chunky into obese. Out in the woods, she'd gripped her right knee and remarked about someone 'parking a car' on her. There were many differences but the similarities were jarring. "Who are you?" he asked, his knuckles white around the handle of a coffee mug. She swallowed her sip of scotch liqueur and shrugged.

"Name's Ghost Chance," she answered with deceptive simplicity. "I'm a writer working on going pro, a crazy cat lady, an' that one friend ya don't take home ta Mom. Nice to meet ya." Donatello shook his head at the explanation, his eyes narrowing as he compared the woman before him to another—one with soft grey-green eyes the color of sunlit moss, pale, freckled flesh, warm brown hair streaked liberally with grey—a woman who was most likely worried sick about—

"Amber!" he burst out suddenly, losing his grip on the coffee mug; the plain white porcelain tumbled to the floor in a shower of cold coffee, shattering upon impact. Suddenly jolted back into himself by the crash, he dropped to his knees on the ade-dingy tile and began gathering the shards. "Ah, _shell_ , I'm sorry, I—" A hand on one of his stilled him, froze him; nervous hazel eyes rolled up to meet a pair of deep green ones. Ghost knelt before him, seemingly visually dissecting him.

"Amber- _who?"_ Ghost's expression was guarded, he realized with a noisy swallow, but he couldn't dismiss the recognition in her eyes. _"Amber-who?"_ she insisted.

"Amber…O'Brien," he finally admitted with a wince. Surely not, he argued silently, surely he hadn't somehow made it to Amber's world! On the off-chance that he had, though, he found his lips illogically loosened. "She's my…my girlfriend. Last I remember, I was with her…then I was in the woods…and…" He couldn't continue, torn between his worry, the impossibility of his being torn out of Amber's arms and thrown into her world, and the horrified gape on this stranger's face.

"Amber…O'Brien…" Ghost repeated slowly, shifting from her knees to her rear end. A loud smack made him jump—her palm violently impacting her exposed forehead. "Holy friggin' Moses," Ghost grumbled digging her fingertips into the emerging wrinkle between her eyebrows. "This day jus' keeps gettin' better."

* * *

Over the next half hour—and more coffee and Drambuie—Ghost got the story out of Donatello…and by 'story' she meant _his_ side of the story. He fell asleep in Amber's arms, as they were wont to do. When he woke up, he found himself at a crossroads—the train tracks that cut through the bottoms followed the crick less than a mile before the riverbed took a sharp switchback turn. Where the lines crossed, the riverbed had been dug out and the rails put up on a trestle.

It was under this trestle that Donatello woke…bewildered, paranoid, and puking his guts up. Even living in smog-cloaked New York wasn't enough preparation for the smell of a half-dry crick in record heat. Even if he hadn't woken up face-first in dying fish and algae, Ghost knew the smell of her home state took some getting used to. A relative of hers moved to Cali a few years back and came home for Christmas and Midsummer. Every time he got off the plane he chucked his cookies right there on the tarmac from the oppressive combination of agriculture, manure, pollution, and exhaust…and the rarely-acknowledged but always present stench of countless morons cooking meth. The meth problem was always bad, but up until her lifetime, you couldn't smell it everywhere you went, no matter how well the wind carried the fumes.

Ghost swore under her breath, pacing the linoleum, mussing her already messy hair with every turn. It didn't make sense—it was impossible!—somehow, if she was reading the situation correctly, Donatello was inexplicably spirited away from his world at the precise moment she'd ended the last chapter of his story. Nearly two weeks ago, she'd hit a road block in her writing and couldn't seem to get past it. There was always a backlog of one-shots due for Gallery of Memories, and now she couldn't seem to get even a word out for the main storyline.

Unable to find a better title, she'd called the long, sprawling epic "A New Lease on Life"…because that sounded saner than "a bullshit story about a bullshit character I made look like me just so I can kill them then torture them repeatedly for lolz." Well, technically it wasn't 'just for lolz.' The story began as nothing more than a tool, a writing exercise. She hoped by 'seeing' a character even weaker and more messed up than herself heal massive emotional scarring, she could finally heal her own less-massive scars. One character died to the killer storm that inadvertently spared Ghost's life; another character dealt with not an abusive partner for years, but an abusive mother for her whole _life_. Despite their similar appearances, Ghost wasn't Amber, and despite their similar personalities and attitudes she wasn't Mercy, and likewise, they weren't her.

Though the story started out as a slightly morbid attempt to 'kill' her weaker self and emerge victorious, the characters and storyline quickly became much more than an exercise. Against their puppet-master's wishes, they grew, fleshed out, blossomed, and became actual characters and stories of their own rather than personified traits and traumas. Before Ghost's _Ides of May_ hiatus was over, a story was born from a sketch and she knew she could never keep it bottled up. Another world was woven into the plotline—new characters, new trials, allegations of deception and broken hearts—and by the time the prequel was posted, there was no turning back. It started out as a slightly sadistic exercise in irony but it had long since become a story.

How the hell did she manage to drag a fictional character from her story into her reality?! Ghost needed something a helluva lot stronger than Drambuie—she needed a mental vacation, starting with a few strawberry daiquiris, some head-banging heavy metal, a crappy romance novel about some illogically awesome beefcake meeting a hopeless nerd, and a long, hard soak in the bathtub! Increasingly aware of Donatello's keen eyes studying her in confusion and disbelief, she scrambled for some way, _any way,_ to explain the bizarre situation without _really_ explaining it _or_ lying. After all, she just spent over a year _repeatedly_ torturing Donatello, his family, his girlfriend, and several other characters he knew! Granted, that's what authors _do_ , but she doubted the characters saw it that way. Already she could see him putting an 'only use Justin Bieber wallpapers' bug on her laptop—or rigging up her tablet to blast bad pop music anytime it was on—or some other equally horrific act of retribution!

"What's your real name?" The question came out of the blue, and the frazzled brunette turned to address the mutant turtle in her kitchen.

"Wha?" As usual, she considered with a cringe, one word out'a her mouth and she convinced everyone and everything in earshot that she had the IQ of an amoeba. _Awesome_. "My real name?" she repeated to disguise the sound of her brain scrambling for any possible escape.

"Yeah," the genius answered, drawing out the word pointedly. "I've never heard of anyone actually _naming_ their kid _Ghost."_

"Yeah, they name'em _North West_ instead." Her grumble was answered with an unamused stare. Digging her fingertips into that emerging wrinkle again, she sighed; she felt a headache coming on, and at this rate, she'd wind up yanking on her daith piercing in minutes. "Yeah, ya got me, it's a nickname. I'd rather not share my real name if ya don't mind—not a lotta people know it, an' for good reason." Donatello's stern gaze made her skin itch, and she wanted nothing more than to blurt out the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help her bog. Should she share that truth, though…

"Listen," she explained instead, finally meeting his eyes. "I can't tell you everything, but I promise I won't lie to ya—I can't _stand_ lies, and I always wind up ready to yack if I'm stuck doing it. Don't ask questions I can't answer, accept when I can't answer one, an' we'll try to figure out how to get you home, 'kay?" A long silence passed, the mutant staring her down over the chipped formica counter.

"Are you a friend of Amber's?" he asked, clearly willing to let go of the name issue. "or do you mean her any harm?"

"Friend?" Ghost repeated with a weak smile. "You could say that I guess…we…have a lot in common…as for whether I mean her any harm…" She paused for an overly drawn out sip of liqueur, waiting for her brain to catch up with her mouth. "I want only the best for her…an' I'm _totally_ shippin' you two—yer a cute couple."

"Then you know what our life's been like," Donnie acknowledged with a shrewd stare. "Dare I say you've been watching us somehow? Or that you know how things will end up between us?" Ghost froze. She wanted to give a somewhat intelligent answer, but all that came out was a half-garbled,

"…uh…huh?" Again, Donnie's nose wrinkled slightly, but whether in amusement or disgust, she didn't know. "Pass."

"One more question, then." He finally looked away, and the absence of his gaze revealed how heavy it had felt; nervously fidgeting with his already empty coffee cup, he stared through the ring of grounds at the bottom. "Will we…I mean…" After such a long episode of nothing but Ghost freaking out and Ghost being socially awkward, now the turtle was a fit of nerves and almost as awkward. "I don't…don't want to lose her," he admitted softly his eyes narrowing, but not tearing. "We don't really know what brought her to my world or what's keeping her there…and there've been strange things happening left and right, impossible dust, ticking clocks, unexplained voices and the feeling that someone's watching us…"

At his sudden startled glance, Ghost piped up, "No, that's not me watchin' y'all. Chill." She could almost swear his cheeks darkened at her answer; what sort of thoughts were running through that turtle's head? If he was _her,_ she'd say he had some seriously explicit footage playing through his thoughts, but she was gutter-brained to a fault—Donnie wasn't _like_ her. Blushing alone didn't mean he was considering pinning a certain brunette to some random surface and— _Crud. Hello, gutter._

"If she's going to be taken away from us—from me," he summed up with a burst of resolve, "I need to know…so I can stop it." Oh, how cute. Ghost chuckled, her lips twisted into a wide, lopsided smile.

"You're adorable, ya know that?" she teased rolling her eyes. "No, Amber's not gonna get taken away from ya— _if_ she leaves, it'll be'er own choice." This apparently didn't reassure him any, so she added, "an' she ain't gonna leave unless ya really fuck up. So don't."

At first, he meant to question her about this statement; then he realized her eyes had grown distant, as though fixed on some unpleasant memory. A familiar scene played out before him: green eyes lost focus and dilated, unpainted lips weakened, shoulders hunched and tightened. Unlike his Amber, though, Ghost stormed out of the room as though the very devil was on her heels. After a moment of hesitation, he followed and found her staring nervously out a window into the back yard, her right hand clenching her left wrist and worrying at some unseen scar.

"Hey." His greeting startled her—an exaggerated startle response, as he'd expected. Despite the layers of fat over it, he could clearly see her pulse racing in her throat. "It seems you have similar demons," he remarked with feigned nonchalance, coming to stand beside her and stare out the window as well. "Similar, if not identical."

"Identical?" Ghost mumbled starting to worry at her wrist again. "Not really…we've both got issues from a helluva storm, but I've moved past mine. No, my real demon is something different—something older…" She cringed, forcing a swallow past the illogical fear rising up her throat. "Jus' call'im Walker."

While Donatello was still processing that bombshell, she shook herself out of her morbid thoughts and brushed past him. "Cold'll be home soon—that's my husband—so we'll need'a hide ya 'til I can work up some explanation." Still focusing on slowing her breathing and stopping her fight-or-flight response, Ghost led Donatello down the poky hallway. She gave a cursory glance into the 'man cave,' then pointedly yanked the door shut while griping about Cold leaving his underwear all over the place. Honestly, there was only one pair of boxers on the gaming chair, but there was TMNT paraphernalia all over that room…not a good idea. "We'll put'cha up in th'office, 'kay?"

"Office?" Another room—and shut door—later, he followed her into the last room on the line and found himself speechless. Though the house was overall cluttered, dated, and somewhat shabby, this room seemed the sole exception.

"Artists have a studio and actors have their dressing rooms, but I'm a writer," Ghost explained as she led the way into her sanctuary. All through the rest of the house, she had to fight Cold tooth and nail over décor, arrangements, and everything from how clean it should be kept to how clothed he had to be in said locations. This room was her sanctuary from game cases, movie posters, dirty underwear, and cackling streaking husbands intent on re-christening everything at once. God, they fit together well. "This is where the magic happens," she shrugged instead of acknowledging her unbidden X-rated memories of the kitchen.

"Magic," Donatello mumbled, eagerly scanning the ceiling height bookshelves lining three of the room's long walls, and the tall windows parading along the last. "Right." As he studied the room, his host threw open heavy curtains—revealing a broken view of the wooded area behind the house, muted by sheer drapes—swiped cat hair off the surface of the massive wooden desk, and awkwardly shoved a litterbox out of view.

"We don't get overnight guests often," Ghost explained as she swatted dust out of the pillows piled into the old wicker papasan chair, "but when we do, we usually put'em up in here for the night—there's room for an air mattress, if you do some creative fi'nanglin' of the furniture, or we've got sleeping bags if that's more—"

The weight of a heavy hand on her shoulder stunned her into silence, and she choked down the fear rising in her gut. She wasn't afraid of Donnie—she could never be afraid of such a sweet, sensitive, and downright drool-worthy man—but more and more, she found herself falling prey to the demons that had stalked her for many years already. _A demon called Walker._ Despite the gooseflesh dancing down her spine, she forced herself to meet his eyes.

"It's perfect," Donatello reassured the suddenly nervous woman with an easy smile. "The whole room smells like books." …and cat litter, but he didn't mention that part. As he expected, her eyes practically lit up behind her glasses.

"Not much like the smell of books, huh?" she admitted wistfully, wandering over to the nearest shelf—literature, classics, and short stories—without the slightest pause, she pulled a volume free and held it up to her nose, taking a long, deep whiff of the book. This is my Best was an old, forgotten literary anthology, a former favorite read of her father's that eventually became one of her favorite 'sniff' books. Not only did it have that delightful 'old book' smell, it carried faint traces of other memory-invoking smells—long-drunk whiskey, fresh wood shavings and grass clippings, Old Spice aftershave, and the sweet pipe tobacco her father had slowly traded for putrid cigars. The combined fragrance always brought her back to when her father gave a damn and her family wasn't working on killing each other off with drama. Her guest probably thought she was loony for huffing the book, but she didn't care; nothing can ever hold as many vivid memories as a familiar smell, and that book was full of both.

Shaking herself from her reverie, she reluctantly re-shelved the book and turned an apologetic smile to Donatello. "The Ma-in-Law-from-Hades should be bringing Cold back anytime—I'd best start figgerin' out dinner. Help yourself to the books and whatnot until I come get you…just…" She cringed. "…please don't hack my computer until I've cleared my browser history?"

* * *

About half an hour passed by without notice. All the while, Donatello paced from one end of the sizable library-slash-office-slash-'magic'-room, waiting, worrying, and wondering. Occasionally, he'd get snippets of sound from the front half of the house—the usual cooking racket, his odd hostess grumbling aloud or hollering at one of the cats, presumably Woozle—and faint, barely-heard traces of music played low. So far, no one had come to find him, and Heiferlump, curled up on the closed laptop Ghost warned him away from, had yet to tire of talking at him.

 _Mah._ "What?" _MAOW!_ "I really wish I knew what you were saying." _Mrowwwr—ack!_ Donnie didn't have much experience with animals, aside from strays, but he'd never come across such a noisy cat before. If he 'answered' her, she'd spout another strange half-purr-half-meow or odd chatter; if he 'ignored' her, she'd sit and make a racket until he looked at her, then she'd _repeat herself,_ as though expecting him to understand. Big cucumber green eyes watched him with startling intelligence, making him more nervous by the moment. Already he wished he'd shooed the cat out when her owner left.

 _Mor-OWR!_ "You're a noisy one, huh?" he muttered at the insistent cat, but she looked all-too-pleased with the proclamation and gave a closed-eyed-whiskers-arched _ack_ in response. Finally, it hit him, and it was all he could do to not face-palm. "I'm arguing with a _cat_ …it's not even _my_ cat." _Ack!_

Before he could respond, whether to roll his eyes or argue back—again!—an ear-piercing shriek rang out in the kitchen followed by an even louder clatter of metal on tile and the sound of shattering pottery. Instantly on alert, he reached up for his goggles…and found nothing. Their absence was ominous, and he quickly realized the rest of his gear and equipment were all missing too. How could he have not noticed that?! How could he have simply found himself in the forest, unarmed and practically naked, and not noticed?! Oh…right…he woke up puking his guts out.

The sounds of a one-sided struggle silenced his mental tirade; his hostess ordered him to stay put, but if she was in danger… Before he could talk himself out of it he crept down the dark hallway armed with the only 'weapon' he could find: a letter-opener of a knife from the desktop. "Hey, hey…shh…shh…" The frantic cries smoothed into choked sobs and the sharp sounds of someone on the verge of hyperventilating. "It's okay, it's just me…it's just me…"

At the doorway to the kitchen, Donnie paused to scope out the situation. A large terra cotta flower pot—broken—had doused the floor with clay dust and potting soil; its previous occupant, a bunched up grouping of mint-like plants, slumped wilting in the dirt. A metal pizza pan leaned against the far wall and an unbaked supreme pizza was crumpled nearby.

Most likely the cause of the commotion, a new stranger had arrived—a rather short man with off-kilter blue eyes, wire-rimmed glasses, and short-shaven blonde hair. Ghost—Donatello's strange hostess—was uninjured, clutching the man's shirt like a lifeline. He, in turn, held her tightly in his thick arms, rubbing her back and shushing her. He wasn't a threat. Donatello's hackles lowered, the sudden burst of adrenaline petering off into nothing as the last piece of the puzzle fell into place—the music he'd barely heard in the office was practically blaring in here. Ghost clearly hadn't heard the man's arrival or approach and she already had an exaggerated startle response.

 _I've been up and down and over and out, and I know one thing: each time I find myself flat on my face, I pick myself up and get back in the race. That's life!_ As the song went on and Ghost's breathing slowed and steadied Donatello crept back down the hallway. This moment wasn't one he should intrude on…and it was entirely too familiar.

* * *

"I hate'im." The claim—halfway between a snarl and a whimper—was nothing new after countless such incidents over the years. "That—tha'son'va'bitch—he—he—"

"He's a bastard," Cold agreed, his usual gruff and blunt manner somewhat gentled. As Ghost's breathing and heart calmed, her anger faded into bitterness. The aftermath of a panic attack is hard enough to get through when your primary reaction is fear. When you add in rage at the cause, anger at yourself for falling prey to that cause, and frustration at being unable to get past the trauma, it's even worse.

When Ghost first started having panic attacks, Cold was bewildered—lost, frightened, and to an extent, irritated at her for being irrational and hysterical. Once she finally confessed their cause to him, told him of the now-infamous 'Walker' and stopped pretending he neither existed nor hurt her, the fear and irritation faded. Now, he felt only anger—at the scumbag who knew his partner first and left her scarred—and disappointment—in himself, in the situation, in the world in general. He didn't blame her anymore, though…Cold was _autistic_ , not _stupid._ "He d'serves to be _beaten,"_ Ghost groused into his sweaty shoulder.

"And tortured," Cold added matter-of-factly.

"And _castrated_..."

"With a _spoon."_ She snorted at the mental image, finally smiling again, even if it was a little weak.

"A dull one?" she asked finally emerging from his neck to meet his eyes. Her eyes burned from drying salt and throbbed from the slight change in light—a sure sign her pupils were still constricted from the rush of adrenaline—but the slight upward tilt of her husband's whisker-bordered lips soothed the sting.

"Nah," he teased, releasing her with a teasing pat on the rear. "Let'im suffer—use that _screwy-sharp-pointy-spoon-thingamabob."_

"Ya mean a grapefruit spoon?" Ghost supplied slyly as they went about cleaning up her mess. "That's...incredibly awesome. Scoop those puppies out a lil' at a time'n go back to scrape the sac clean!" Sure enough, Cold winced at the mental image, but he grinned at her. He opened his mouth to fire off another even more disturbing mental image—after all, this wasn't their first 'torture Walker' contest—but she turned away and knelt to hold the dustpan. Sure enough, his eyes were immediately drawn from the dirt to her over-plump posterior and his brain ceased functioning, leaving him standing there staring like an imbecile. "It was your hair...I didn't expect it to be so short."

"Blame Mom," Cold answered sullenly, finally shaking off the 'power of the pudge' and fulfilling his end of the bargain with the broom. "I agreed to be _kidnapped,_ not _shaved."_

"She wouldn't cut it if ya'd take care of it." She fought a grin at the familiar argument and the sulky expression he always wore when it came up. "Ya've got such gorgeous curls, Hon…really ought'a take care'f'em."

"Fuggoff."

"You first."

"Maybe later."

* * *

"What'd'ja do?" The sudden demand—halfway between irritable and sarcastic—froze Ghost in her tracks. The office door hung open and her pizza-deprived partner stood pointedly in the doorway, arms crossed and his expression flat.

"Uh…do?" she echoed back hurrying toward him with a forced grin. "Did I lock Heffy-butt in here?" The last few steps revealed Donatello standing silently by the window closest to the papasan chair, his expression torn between offense and embarrassment. The heavy floor-length curtains and gauzy sheers lay pooled at his feet, evidence that he overestimated the security of the hardware. Heifer sat on those drapes too frequently for the already wimpy tension rods to have held.

"There's a mutant nerd in there!" Crap. "Screw how ya managed it, why didn'ya at least pick Raph or Mikey, or even that stick-ass Leo? Mikey's a gamer, Raph's entertaining as Hell, an' even Leo has experience with pointy objects! I could'a shown'im my blades! Why _this_ guy?" With every word, Donnie's cheeks grew darker and darker, and his eyes narrowed into a more blatant glare. Earlier, he was ready to give the loud-mouthed blond the benefit of the doubt; now he felt like finding a way to 'accidentally' electrocute him. Not for the first time, Ghost found herself staring at Cold in blatant disbelief, wondering how on earth his strange little mind worked.

"Wait," she demanded of her husband. "There's a six foot talking ninja turtle in my office, I _clearly_ hid him here, an' all you care about's that he's not _fun?_ —and somehow it's _my_ fault he's here?! –and I somehow managed to _choose_ which turtle to drag here against his will?!" Her arms spread wide in a 'da fuck?!' gesture, she scoffed.

"Well, yeah," Cold answered as though pointing out the obvious. "It's _Donnie—_ of _course,_ you dragged his ass here." Off-kilter blue eyes rolled at the unspoken. "If it was anyone else, I'd know it was an _accident."_ In the awkward silence that filled the room, one could even have heard a hiccup from a world on a dust speck clearly. Not recognizing that awkward silence—or perhaps wanting to make it even _more_ awkward—Cold added in a huff, "Ya don't clear your browser history…perv."

 _That did it._ Without even bothering to disguise her intentions—or the raging blush spanning from her hairline to her neckline—Ghost stomped up to her husband and _thwacked_ him on the back of the head Mikey-style.

"Let's get some things straight, _Assmunch,"_ she ground out while he whined and pouted. "One, look in the fuckin' mirror before ya call someone a perv—I've seen how ya drool over that Jehovavilch gal!" Without pausing to let the sting fade—or let him correct her on Mila Jovovich's (intentionally butchered) name—she launched right into the next, ticking the points off on her fingers. "Two, I did _not_ drag him here _or_ have anything to do with him being here! I was s'prised as he was! Three, if I was so _Mary-Sue-Rageous_ that I could literally _drag_ someone from another world into ours, do ya _really_ think I'd be fuckin' unemployed?! I'd'a dropped Jabba-the-Fraggin'-Hut in that scumbag's livin' room when he decided to stop payin' me for the work I was doin'!" Finally a reaction from Cold—granted, it was a blink, but it was a start. "Four, if I could do somethin' that awesome, I'd totally be _abusin'_ that shit—I'd'a yanked _Walker_ out'a _our_ world an' dumped'im in _Gollum's pit_ —or Voldy-dork's _playroom_ —or a friggin' _Barney_ episode for God's sakes! I'd _torture_ his screwed up sadistic carcass beyond recognition!"

Suddenly, it became clear to her that she was deadly serious instead of being sarcastic…and she was only a few decibels from a harpy shriek. Even Cold, who normally could listen to her rant and rave for hours on end with little more than a shrug and 'meh,' was cringing slightly. She probably looked _crazy_ …time to wrap it up. "…and _five?"_ All the fingers ticked off and closed, she gave her husband a half-assed sock to the shoulder. "Lay off'a the genius a'ready. Brains trump brawn, knucklehead." She shot said genius a chagrined smile and bodily turned Cold around in the hallway, and without further ado, physically herded him to the kitchen.

"Yeah, for zombies," Cold shot back. Another brainduster.

"Say you're sorry, Cold!"

"I'm sorry, Cold!" As the eccentric and incredibly immature couple bickered their way out of earshot, Donatello stared at the empty doorway in disbelief. A timely _murr-OW!_ from the desk chair drew his attention. Heiferlump sprawled precariously along the top of the narrow back monorail style, with her eyes locked on him as though eager to continue their 'chat.'

"Good grief," Donnie muttered reaching out to scratch Heifer's dirty white chin. "Here _I_ felt crazy for _talking to you."_ Another closed-eyed-whiskers-arched _ack!_ told him she didn't blame him…and warned him the insanity was only just beginning.

* * *

 **WARNING: Long-ass notes to follow, feel free to skip or skim unless you have a question!**

 **NOTES in order of occurrence**

*Landscape around the house: This part is fictional—Cold and I are too bleepin' poor to own our own home and are currently living in a loft apartment sandwiched between a noisy nympho, a screaming baby, a chronically-drunk frat boy, ONE pair of good, quiet neighbors, and at least two families with under-supervised teenagers. It would literally take a double homicide for us to be able to afford a house—especially since the housing market blew up after a large percentage of the homes in town were trashed by storms. Anyway, the NON-fictional part is that this area is somewhat like the one I lived in as a teen. For those unfamiliar with the terms: A _tree stand_ can mean a hunting blind mounted in a tree, OR it can mean an area of forested land left to grow wild. _River bottoms_ or just _bottoms_ are usually a low, flat, undeveloped area bordering a body of water. Normally these fallow lands are very much in the flood plain and border 'cricks' or creeks and are intentionally left undeveloped because of their risky location and frequent marshiness. Some bottoms, like the ones described, were built up so railway lines could go through them without dealing with buildings and such. Either way, public wooded areas, bottoms, and especially remote areas adjacent to train tracks, are dangerous places you don't want to go rooting around in without packing some serious heat.

**Regarding the 'haunted house' bit: Jokes aside, yes, Cold and I BOTH have personally experienced brushes with 'ghosts,' I DID grow up in a house that turned out to be pretty legitimately HAUNTED, and in both my case AND his, what we saw, heard, and experienced was also seen, heard, and experienced by many others, both familiar and completely strange. In my case, that means my family, the family we sold the house to, AND the ones THEY sold the house to, who seemed to be toughing it out, and a few friends of all three of those families. In Cold's case, everyone who worked at the same late-night grab-and-go diner his mother did while he was a kid, half the regular customers, visiting family of staff, and on occasion, an unfortunate person delivering stock and supplies. None of the persons who regularly experienced the 'hauntings' were experiencing any psychological impairments or under the influence. I won't go into further detail here because people tend to get bent out'a shape over the debate between 'hallucinations' and 'honest-to-bog paranormal activity.' If anyone asks about it, I'll post the specs on my forum and add a link. For the record, I'm STILL not convinced my house was haunted, even after so many other people experiencing the same stuff; still, my mother and I are only two of dozens of former residents who wouldn't return there for the life of us. I'd rather face the zombies, thanks. ;)

***To many who live here, Missouri is a wonderful, beautiful, ecologically diverse place that we wish we could share with the world, but we often wind up ignoring or even completely MISSING things that appall outsiders...like how the overwhelming majority of Missourians are law-abiding and not brain-dead, but the whole state REEKS because of the few who AREN'T law abiding and ARE brain-dead AND making drugs. S.M.H.

****'ANLoL was an exercise that became an epic.' – There, ya have it, the ugly truth behind A New Lease on Life. Flames, rants, whatever, I'll take'em, but I stand by my statement—it IS NOT a self-insert and has not BEEN a self-insert since before it even became a TMNT story.

#Frank Sinatra "That's Life." I usually wind up playing swing, jazz, and similar music while cooking—LOTS of Sinatra and Michael Buble!—and classic rock while cleaning. (Quiet Riot, Survivor, and all those awesome classics you just never hear on the radio!)

 **"Character" rundown in order of appearance**

 **Ghost Chance** – That would be yours truly, the odd little duck who brought you A New Lease on Life, ANLoL: Gallery of Memories, the Moments in Time series, and Little Moments. I have an incredibly dirty mind that is ALWAYS swan-diving gleefully into the gutter and a tendency toward being predominantly unfiltered. I WILL be AWKWARD. Hubby and I are both pretty immature, overly emotional, and very loud; we both have major potty-mouth and smartassery problems and frequently get into spontaneous 'insult contests' and 'smart-off contests,' and our favorite petnames for each other are insults. Honestly, we curse WAY more in real life than you'll see here. We do NOT have children and WILL NOT have children because we'd probably be HORRIBLE parents.

 **Heiferlump Chance** – our incredibly fat and even more incredibly talkative tabby cat. Often referred to by any number of nicknames – including but not limited to Heifer, Heffy-butt, and Fat Lump – she is a blonde tabby with pale green eyes and is a total attention whore. She NEVER shuts up. She has been known to approach people who 'don't talk to animals because 'that's crazy' or 'they don't understand anyway'…and drag them into long, loud, and increasingly vehement arguments with her. She's primarily well behaved, as she's getting on in her years, and is way smarter than anyone gives her credit for. She does tricks for treats.

 **Woozle Thomas** – our other cat, slightly less fat but still obese. Woozle is younger than Heifer and is white with bright reddish-orange splotches and freaky-vibrant copper-orange eyes. He's fussy, hyperactive, often goes from clingy to _lemme-go_ at the drop of a hat, tends to beat up his 'sister,' and has anxiety problems…and unfortunately, incontinence issues. He also has a habit of wandering the hallway wailing as though lost; when this happens, Cold or I respond as described, and he comes bounding into the room as though he was actually lost.

 **Walker** – Cold's predecessor by several years. Walker started off a model young man and gave off no red flags until I was living on my own. Once my folks weren't around to interfere, he became increasingly controlling, irrational, aggressive, and eventually, violent. I have apparently blocked the worst memories from our relationship and frankly, if they haven't returned in going on ten years, they can STAY blocked.

 **Cold Thomas** – Cold is my lifemate, my partner, and in everything but name and paper, my husband; we've been together for almost a decade but have our reasons for not getting _legally_ married. Cold is mildly autistic—he has high-functioning Aspberger's—and was raised _non-autistic._ Perhaps because he didn't know about it until a few years back, he learned to work around his oddities and cope with them well. He is _incredibly_ fluent in saracasm and turning words around, and is a bona-fide smartass with major potty mouth.

 **Glossary:**

 **Guch** – a generic 'ick' word. Starts with 'guh' and ends with phlegm.

 **'is'mornin'** – this morning

 **Quitcher -** Quit your

 **Tha'son'va'bitch** – crying-snot-nose-speak for 'that son of a bitch'

 **Fuggoff** – Fuck off

 **Voldy-dork** \- Voldemort


	2. NOPE

**Nope**

Morning dawned on the Thomas-Chance household unnoticed. As eleven o'clock passed into noon, Cold slunk from the bedroom to the kitchen, grabbed a bowl of cereal, and retreated to the Man Cave intent on vegging until work. Just after 12:30, his partner finally stirred. Wrapped in a baggy gape-necked nightgown that barely covered the goods, Ghost shambled to the kitchen, blearily following the smell of coffee.

At the small kitchen table, Donatello watched the farce playing out before him in disbelief. Ghost's braided hair, no longer bound up in a bun, had worked loose overnight, leaving her with a frizzy lopsided halo atop her head. Shadows ringed her eyes, and she stumbled with every step, clearly suffering for having left her glasses in the bedroom. She dragged her feet through the steps of preparing coffee, downed the first cup in a single breath, then ducked back down the hallway again without ever once looking at the mutant turtle in her kitchen.

"Mworn'in'," she slurred in the open door of the Man Cave; as expected, Cold sat hunched over at the television, deftly maneuvering his character around some nameless video game boss.

"Yuck," Cold grumbled back without once batting an eye, and she gave a grunt of agreement. Mornings _were_ yuck, never mind that their _mornings_ were actually most folks' _afternoon._ Working nights really ran a person through the wringer.

"Work t'day?"

"Last I checked." On screen, his character failed to dodge in time and exploded in a spray of blood. "Woman, go play somewhere."

"Screw you," she yawned shambling back down the hallway again.

"You're doin' the work!" Cold called out after her.

"Fuck that noise—too tired." When she finally returned to the kitchen, she was decent, if sloppily dressed, and her hair was tied up in another lazy bun. Still unaware of any changes in her surroundings, she went about setting up Cold's lunch for the day, preparing a jug of sun tea to steep on the porch, and downing cup after cup of coffee. All the while, she seemed completely oblivious to the elephant in the room.

"Woozle," she hollered when the cat started yowling again, "Shut up a'ready! Yer not lost!" As every time before, Woozle came bounding into the kitchen as though he really was lost and nearly tripped her. With a sigh of frustration, she bent down, scooped him up, and cradled him on his back like an infant. "You lil' knucklehead," Ghost mumbled scratching his always-itchy cheeks. "Ya mist'cher Mommy-time 's'mornin', huh? Poor lil' fuzz-butt." Shifting the clingy cat to one shoulder, she finished up preparing Cold's lunch then shuffled out to the sunroom to check on her houseplants.

…only to Scooby-Doo-scramble back into the kitchen, catless and wide-eyed in disbelief. Stunned blue-green eyes finally fixed on Donatello, blinking repeatedly as their owner struggled to process what she was seeing. There was a real, live, in-her-face ninja turtle slumped over at her kitchen table, staring her down over his empty coffee cup.

"Good morning," he greeted when it became clear she couldn't get any words together. "Sleep well?" She blinked again, her low-hanging jaw raising with a _snap._ Donnie could practically see the gears turning in her head as she struggled to comprehend what she was seeing. Without a word, she turned heel back into the kitchen, yanked out the bottle of Drambuie and poured a hefty slop into her coffee cup, and stumbled out of the room. She didn't say a word, but her meaning was clear…

 _NOPE._


	3. Blood and Water

**_So...THIS mess. So far "Blocked" has been primarily humorous, but in this (long) installment, it gets messy...REALLY MESSY. This, dear readers, is based on fact and RealLife drama. (Except for the Ninja in the room, of course.) Heavy angst between the humor._**

 ** _I think I speak for most serious fans when I say we've all considered what would happen if we were to meet the characters we idolize...and I'm not vain enough to assume Donatello OR any of his brothers wouldn't be completely unable to handle me. Honestly, I'd probably annoy Donnie to bits, make Raph try to claw his brains out, depress Mikey, and horrify Leo with my language and piss-poor tea-making skills. Plus the rest...well, anyhoo, hope this awkward disaster is enjoyable, but if not, hope it at least helps you understand what goes on between chapters of_** ** _A New Lease on Life_** ** _._**

 ** _Warnings for open, honest discussion of abuse, more foul language than usual, one-sided UST, and some awkward imagery._**

* * *

 **Blood and Water**

Music echoed through the Chance household, emanating from the curtained sunroom. Back in the office, Donatello paced from one end of the room to the other, lost in worries and aggravation…specifically, worries about his family and his green-eyed lover, and inexplicably intense aggravation at the woman whose house he was now all but trapped in.

Ghost had a lot in common with Amber, but most of those things weren't exactly positive and the few positive things were irritatingly different. His Amber smelled of smoky Scotch and sweet tropical fruit—Ghost favored mint, citrus, and coffee. Amber's voice was soft if off-key—Ghost was obnoxiously loud and _intentionally_ off-key. Amber was sarcastic—Ghost was just a _smartass_. Amber was the 'speak softly and carry a big stick' type...Ghost, so far, appeared to be the sort of maniac who shoots a _Gatling gun_ from a _tank_ on an _airplane_. Every moment he spent with the crazy cat lady, Donnie found himself subconsciously—and consciously—comparing her to the woman he left behind. Every time, she came up seriously lacking.

His thoughts turned to the odd woman's promise to get him home. So far, there'd been no progress—not even a hint of it!—but she still insisted she was 'working on it.' It was likely a routine fault of hers, this failure to live up to her duties and promises. _Yeah, yeah,_ she'd always grumble, _I'll git right on that._ The unspoken was that _right on that_ always occurred after several more tasks that didn't always seem more pressing.

The mutant heaved a sigh, pulled off his glasses, and rubbed his sore eyes. Maybe that was being a little harsh, he considered silently. After all, a lot of what she failed to accomplish was due to physical limitations…she was, after all, in pretty bad shape even without her bum knee, and her immune system was _toast_. She got sick at an alarming rate…and just the day before she spent the whole day practically bedridden from a migraine. It was a nasty one, too—one that eventually drove her to the point of vomiting before it faded away. By the time she was able to handle the slightest bit of light, it was dark out and Cold was due home soon.

Okay, he admitted begrudgingly, maybe he really _was_ being a little too hard on her. Maybe he was so critical of her because she wasn't Amber? –because she had just enough in common with his lover to make things awkward? Maybe he needed to give her a break. Determined to be at least a little more polite—despite everything in him telling him to keep his distance—Donnie strode out of the office, down the hallway, and to the heavy curtain separating another small room from the parlor.

The moment the curtain was pulled aside, the volume of the music increased and the lyrics—and wailed off-key real-time accompaniment came through clearly. _"Should I letchu? I don't think yer ready to go. If I letchu, then could'ja stop me whenever I tell ya that I'm all right? I know I make everythin' look just fine. If ya wonder what it feels like,_ _ **stop me when ya've had enough!"**_ The last line was delivered in a slightly insane 'Jim Carrey movie' sort of growl. Donnie cringed at the volume of the music, clasped his hands over the two patches of cartilage shielding his inner ears, and pointedly cleared his throat. Ghost startled, looking up from the long planter already overtaken by overgrown catnip and—swaying somewhat alarmingly—reached to turn down the music playing on her laptop.

"Hey, Don," she greeted leaning rather suspiciously on the windowsill with a quick smile. Not for the first time he wondered if she was walking with her cane for a good reason, not 'just as a precaution' like she claimed. "What's up?"

"I just wondered if there's been any progress," he answered lowering his hands from his ears to clench at his waist. "I'm worried about my family." Ghost winced and turned back to the battered round café table. Bunches of healthy kitty-crack stems littered the small amount of space not currently occupied by her computer, and a popular auction site was open on-screen. It didn't seem any of the items listed on the site had sold that day, but then again, who actually had enough money to shell out twenty or more for gaming cards? The _sold_ column, however, was full of just such people.

"They're doin' fine, Hon," she promised without emphasis, feeling her way over to the table. "Time's frozen where you're from—probably because of the whole _diff'rent world_ bit. Nothin's going to happen 'til you're home."

"How do you know that?" he demanded. Already he was forgetting his vow to take it easy on her; already he was getting irritated at her. Realizing this, he took a mental step back, exhaling sharply through his nose. "You say you can see what's going on in my world," he reminded more calmly. "What's happening right now? Can you check on them for me? Please?" Ghost blinked at him, her expression blank.

"They're good." Something in his expression must have convinced her he wasn't buying it. "Uch…fine." She closed her eyes, lifted her hands up to hover on either side of her head and wiggled her fingers. _"Oogedy-boogedy bing-bang-boom,"_ she proclaimed with complete sincerity. "show me the inside of Donnie's room." He stared at her in utter disbelief. Almost immediately her eyes popped back open innocently as though she didn't just make a fool of herself. "You're both still sleeping; all's quiet on the home-front."

"Are you _serious_ right now?" the genius demanded. "You expect me to believe—" His tangent was cut off by a sudden outburst from the cellphone on the table; the battered appliance was heartily belting out the chorus of some horrible disco number. Ghost cringed, obviously identifying the caller by the custom ringtone, and picked it up.

"Sorry, I've gotta get this," she explained stumbling out of the room. "She'll just hammer the phone if I don't answer—I'll be right back." Over the next few minutes, Donatello fumed, staring out the windows of the sunroom while Ghost spoke with the caller—her mother, apparently, who apparently equated _not calling in a week_ with _dead and rotting in a ditch._ After Ghost's rather high-pitched and sarcastically-exaggerated twang faded into hushed tones, bits of her side of the conversation filtered through the curtain every now and then. _Are you—not faking it this—When did this—What's—Yes—Yes, I understand—Just gimme a—yeah, same as always._

Finally, she bid goodbye and hung up. Donnie braced himself, expecting her to return to the sunroom and the fight. Instead, slow, clumsier than usual footsteps passed the sunroom and shambled down the hallway, where their owner _whacked into_ a wall— _HARD_ —spat "There's a _wall_ there, _Dumbass"_ —then a door shut. He waited a few minutes, thinking she'd come back soon enough. When she failed to emerge, he followed and found the bedroom door shut with light filtering through underneath. Every now and then soft noises came through—a snap, a click, the rustle of cloth and the buzz of a zipper—then, without warning, the room echoed with several loud successive crashes and a shrieked expletive of surprise.

Don was through the door to check on his aggravating host before he even considered that his presence might not be welcome. The sight that greeted him made him heave a heavy sigh: the eccentric woman sprawled on the floor of the closet underneath three baskets worth of clean laundry, visibly stunned and blinking in obvious disorientation.

"Do I wanna know?" he asked dryly but she just shook her head in a daze, staring through the wall before her. His doctoring kicked in at that blank stare and he hurried to check her pulse—at the wrist, Amber was enough reason to never again check in the neck—and thoroughly went through the list of possible reasons for her to have wound up in this posture. Stroke, heart attack, brain aneurysm…it wasn't until he set about a familiar and innocent pupillary reflex check—with a flashlight snagged from the nightstand—that he realized she was blushing like crazy…and cringing. Right…give her space.

"I don't need help," she insisted carefully and coolly turning to stare through the rack of linens she landed by, "but so help me, if you don't get out'a my face _right now…"_ Aloud she let the threat go unfinished…because they were both in committed relationships with other people and she had no _civilized_ way to excuse the entirely _uncivilized_ pheromones she had to be putting off. _Damn,_ he smelled good!

'If I could bottle his ass, I'd make a killin' peddlin'im as cologne…No—NO! Bad thoughts, very bad thoughts! Think about Cold! Think about underwear! _Fuck,_ think about _Cold's underwear!'_ In hopes of gaining a visual on the libido-killing white briefs, she dug frantically through the linens scattered across her lap for a pair of that very underwear—the old, faded man-panties that had holes not worth patching and didn't look good on _any_ grown man. Instead, she found herself clutching a scrap of something purple and lacy and _way_ too small to be a scarf, held like Hamlet holding up the skull of his dearly departed Yorick. 'Huh…I don't remember wearin' the purple fancy-pants lately…were these at the bottom of the—" Choking at the reminder of her lazy housekeeping habits—hamper-hiders left over from their anniversary in April—she roughly shoved the lacy purple elephant into her pocket. "You didn't see that."

Donnie was too mortified to do anything but nod in agreement. "—and _why_ are you on the floor again?" he demanded instead only to notice her cane tangled up in a worn jersey sheet. His eyes shot to hers sternly. "Are you—"

"I'm not _hurt,"_ she admitted latching on and overly-carefully walking herself up the doorframe, visibly clinging for dear life. "An' I ain't the one dyin' yet—I'm just fightin' an ear infection an' vertigo an' too damn stubborn to resort to a crutch or sittin' on my ass." Arse, he almost corrected the dizzy brunette but caught himself in time. Sighing in aggravation and grumbling under his breath about difficult patients and stubborn women, he caught her by the elbows and steered her toward the bed. Twice on the some-odd-foot trek, he felt her start to pitch to one side and tightened his grip, pausing until she nodded her assent.

"I'm assuming you've had an actual doctor check you out," he frowned as she tumbled roughly onto the foot of the bed even with his help. She really was a mess… "Or have you self-diagnosed and decided it'll go away on its own?" She rolled her eyes at him and began digging through the toiletries bag beside her, setting aside any containers that needed replenishing.

"Cold didn't walk my hopeless ass to the bus stop yesterday because he's a worrywart," she pointed out, uttered a non-word-sound that he interpreted as meaning 'go figure!' and chucked the nearly empty bottle marked _shampoo_ into the 'refill' pile. "Doc's got me on antibiotics to clear it up—it's nothin' serious, _world-spinning_ aside. Started last week—the day I left town for that weekend getaway. While you two idiots were fighting over the bathroom, I was fighting to stay vertical in a city that's nothin' but hills."

"Branson?" he asked recalling the trip's planning. She nodded, still going through the bag.

"Every day the vertigo got worse'n worse to the point where I actually fell headfirst into a _bloody street sign_ in Ol' Downtown—the other direction I would'a been _Street-Pizza._ 'at's what happened in the closet—I needed to be _vertical,_ my ears wanted me _horizontal,_ an' my _clumsy ass_ collected some laundry on the way down." Half of him wanted to demand if she ever got through a single day without cursing, but he ignored that in favor of a more pressing quandary.

"If you're sick and can't keep standing you should rest," he insisted relieving her of the nearly-empty bag with a stern frown; she snatched it back with an _oh, no you didn't!_ expression. _"Unpacking_ can _wait,"_ he insisted slowly trying again to grab the bag only for Ghost to latch on with both arms and an _I will bite you!_ scowl. Even with the difficult brunette being even more difficult than usual, he insisted on being the voice of reason. "You really need to be able to walk for this—at least without falling into walls."

She uttered an embarrassed groan and hid her face in the bag's gaping zipper. Of _course,_ he heard it…how could he _not_ witness something so completely awkward?! Good thing she had no pride. "I'm not unpacking," she mumbled instead of admitting how embarrassed she was. "I'm just getting my go-bag ready—I'll be needin' it again, soon, after all…" She trailed off, losing herself in horrified remembrances of the last time she needed to be ready to jump and run at any moment. One instance came to mind first—a dementia-ridden elderly woman who was remarkaly dim-witted even before Alzheimer's, grumbling at the top of her lungs about supposedly being 'treated like she was stupid,' when she was "just as smart as [she always was!]"

It took biting her tongue until she tasted blood for Ghost to keep herself from pointing out—and very loudly, too— _"That's the problem, Gran!"_ Normally, her brain-to-mouth filter was faulty at best and deactivated at most, but when she was around family, she had to really kick that puppy into overdrive. Half the stuff she'd normally just blurt out without regard would be met with horrified swooning at the very least, so she usually just kept her mouth shut. Heck, other than her parents, most of her family probably thought she was either horribly shy or prone to 'that involuntary mutism stuff' Cold dealt with. Please…Cold experienced a periodic brain-break around others that kept his words from coming out—she just learned to keep hers in!

The incident that sparked the memory was a common one, and honestly, it was only the most amusing one. If Ghost Chance hadn't been repeatedly saving Granny Chance from her own idiocy back before Ghost even started school, she'd feel like a horrible person for the comment she'd literally _bit_ back. Ghost loved her family—loved her Grandmother—but if everyone in the world was as brilliant as Granny Chance had always been, most of humanity would have long since forgotten to breathe without constant prompting.

…and Gran was only _half_ the problem…

All while Ghost chased her proverbial squirrel and fought to reign in her horrifying memories of counting out the hours 'til her _sentence_ at Gran's was up, Donatello studied her with his too-intelligent hazel eyes. In that moment, her mid-brown hair hanging in two lopsided frizzy braids and her eyes haunted by some horror he'd never experience, the eccentric brunette before him looked more like Amber than ever before…and even if she wasn't Amber, wasn't more similar to Mercy in personality, that resemblance made him want to gather her in his arms, nuzzle into her frizzy hair, and promise that everything would be okay. The realization physically hurt…he missed his sweet lover more every day.

 _I ain't the one dyin' yet._

The memory gave him pause and he carefully paced away to inspect a lithograph on the wall, only to realize it was a framed calendar page. _'Attack cat on duty_ my posterior,' he thought in defiance. 'If someone ever broke into this house, _Woozle_ would hide and _Heiferlump_ would immediately decide the intruder was her new best friend… _and_ debate partner.' "Who's dying?" he asked instead of voicing those thoughts. Ghost startled out of her thoughts and turned a _deer in the headlights_ look on him, but quickly sobered and busied herself again with the toiletry bag; this time, Donnie let it go, recognizing the habit from another who struggled to process unpleasant topics without busying her hands.

"My uncle Bob," Ghost admitted without any of the sorrow he expected to come pouring out. "Donnie, look, I hope to God you never have to deal with my family, even on the phone…" The blue-green eyes that fixed on his were an odd mixture of disgust, anger, resentment, and humiliation. "I can tell ya think I'm crazy, an' yer probably right…now consider that other'n my _mother,_ I'm the _sanest_ of the bunch."

"You _can't_ be serious," he blurted out before he could hold back the rude comment; someone without a filter, perhaps Amber, perhaps Mercy, was wearing off on him. Though he felt horrible, Ghost actually seemed to be unsurprised by the outburst.

 _"Completely,"_ she admitted gravely. "There's two aunts an' two uncles in the picture, one of each with kids, and Granny Chance has somehow managed to survive her own idiocy so far. Both aunts're fine, even if one's a lil' unhinged since her stroke, an' the younger uncle's fine so long's people pretend to think as highly of'im as he does. Other'n' one _man-whore_ cousin and another talkin' 'bout movin' to China, the kids're all remarkably stable. We're nothin' ya write home about unless you just wanna share a laugh." She laughed at memory—though she'd never confess it, it involved Llamas and a cemetery—but that snicker faded into a nervous titter.

"Even with that lot bein' easy to get along with," she admitted subdued, "every Chance family gathering has to involve booze an' a 'chill out' room, and absolutely nothing caffeinated, or Granny Chance and Uncle Bob drive the rest of the group near violence. Bob supposedly lives with her so he can take care of'er." Here she scoffed in disgust. "He's just _sayin'_ that 'cuz'e's a _braindead mooch_ —couldn't trust'im with a _pet rock_ without worryin' he'd find a way to _kill_ it from neglect. _"_ She scrambled for a way to express Bob in a way Donnie might comprehend without being _needlessly_ insulting…or too graphic. "He melted'is brains with drugs years' back, spent the rest of his time chain-smoking, an' ideally, 'e shouldn't be trusted alone with anyone who ain't got balls."

Donnie…wasn't sure what to say about that. Surely she didn't mean Bob—surely— "I meant that figuratively, not literally," Ghost explained upon deciphering from Donatello's expression that he thought she was referring to sexual violence. "He's just got the attitude of a violent toddler denied candy an' two exes who swore up'n'down'e beat'em. Honestly, he's a horrible person to be related to but so long's you ignore'is drama, he's easy'nuff to deal with."

She shook her head, realizing she once again followed her mental squirrel and went on a tangent. "But that's all beside the point. Bob came down with lung cancer after'e _supposedly_ stopped smoking—there's always cause fer doubt when _he_ claims somethin'—an' by the time'e found out, it was already metastized to'is brain."

Ghost could still remember the day she got the first call—could remember how it was snowing before January for once, and how the call came in while she was taking a break from hanging lights along the kitchen cabinets—how she froze at hearing about the spot on Bob's lung. Being the sort who always felt more for others than they ever did for her, she wasn't ashamed to admit she cried over the loud, obscene uncle who'd only ever frightened her. After all the bridges he'd burned in the family, she honestly worried she would be the only one crying at his funeral. Death didn't exonerate a soul from their lifetime of sins and faults, but in a world of constant change, it was bluntly, horrifyingly permanent. Granny Chance had so far retained some of herself despite intermittent Dementia, but Ghost worried that burying Bob—Gran's son—would accomplish what the Alzheimer's, heart attacks, and her own idiocy hadn't—that Uncle Bob's funeral would soon be followed by his mother's.

Ghost fell silent in remembrance, grateful that Donnie didn't push her to continue. The spot on his lung was only the beginning, marked by snow when it should have rained. Many long, gut-wrenching months passed since that first revelation with more, increasingly horrible add-ons—It was lung cancer, the cancer was advanced, then it was terminal, then the news came in that it had spread to his brain…among other, less fried internal organs. She shook off the silence like a cold draft.

"Ever since the diagnosis was official, 'e went down south fer treatments at the VA hospital. After _Asshole_ decided he didn't have to pay me anymore, I became the only unemployed local in the family…an' I was the one sent to take care'a Granny Chance 'in his absence.'" Of course, _that_ would imply Bob ever did _anything_ besides sit in his _dungeon_ and _pout,_ but that was beside the point. "Sometimes it was a weekend, sometimes longer…the worst was two whole fuckin' months in that house with both of'em there, an' it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say I might'a left claw-marks on the furniture. Last time I was there, I wound up having a massive panic attack an' swore I'd never go back without Cold there to make it feel _safe."_

"Safe?" Don asked in confusion. "Bob was gone most of the time, right? How was it unsafe if he wasn't there?" For a moment, Ghost had no way of answering without opening a helluva can of worms on her otherworldly visitor. She grabbed her left wrist, digging her fingernails into her skin in hopes the admittedly mild pain would help ground her. Bob was unpleasant and abrasive, but of all the family, she was the only one capable of really tuning him out; she was the only one who could handle more than ten minutes in his presence without wanting to break his nose. Trouble was, he wasn't the worst offender at Gran's house...he was just the offender prone to hiding in his room.

"You know what Mercy's mother's like." It wasn't a question, but he nodded anyway. "Clarity Ross was physically and emotionally abusive, but she didn't start out that way—she got addicted, got sick, an' that sick an' addiction became a sort of perfect storm…an' instead'a gettin' help an' realizin' what was really the problem, she let'er sick mind run wild—convinced'erself Mercy was headin' down a road to ruin before she was even out'a pigtails. The alcohol an' illness don't exonerate her in the slightest, but she didn't know what she'd become."

 _'Shut up_ before you start spouting some weird _omniscient author shit_ or he realizes you aren't _torn up_ over something that happened to a supposed _friend.'_ It was horrible, true, but without the giant mutant turtle staring her down, Mercy and Clarity Ross were only characters to her—granted, they were a mess born of much experience and research and she empathized with anyone who was in their shoes, but dammit, they weren't _real_ until Donnie showed up puking under a bridge! Now… _now_ the writer's head hurt from trying to figure out if Mercy was _real_ because she was _written_ or if she was _written_ because she was _real_.

"There's a few main kinds of intentional abuse people aim at their kids," she related simply ticking them off on chubby, shaky fingers. _"Financial abuse and neglect, physical abuse, emotional abuse…"_ She trailed off seeing him force a knot of tension down his throat at the final, unspoken form of abuse, and let it rest unsaid. "I can speak fer myself an'the others when I say Bob an' Granny Chance're _emotional abuser_ s—she learned from her dad, Bob learned from her, so-on-so-forth. It's hard to explain…"

Her brows knit as she stared down at the rumpled afghan under her legs. "They gotta way of treatin' ya like yer the only good thing that ever happened to'em, throwin' compliments and little kindnesses at ya an' throwin' ya off—buildin' ya up to the point where ya finally feel safe an' secure…then they intentionally _cut ya ta ribbons_ with their _forked tongues!"_ She spat the last, finally unable to keep the illusion that she was entirely unaffected, but it was obvious her company didn't really understand. It probably sounded like she was 'being too sensitive' but when even the least sensitive folks dealing with it have been nearly crippled by the behavior... She refused to finish that thought. There was a fine line between 'unacceptable treatment' and 'abuse,' and Granny Chance didn't even both toeing that fine line - she whole-heartedly dove into abusive behavior without ever considering what it could be doing to those who experienced it.

"Imagine if yer Dad intentionally pit y'all brothers against one another," Ghost tried again, describing a habit less likely to be mistaken as harmless and innocent. "Pretend his favorite hobby is to start fights—he'll tell each of ya different lies about the others in private, then when ya each come to'im fer answers about why the others're angry at'cha, he'll tell ya what he told them but blame the lies on the others instead, sayin' _they_ told _him_. It'll build a web'a lies that just gets more'n more tangled…then when the pressure bursts an' y'all're tearin' each other to ribbons, he'll revel in the _attention_ yer fightin' brings'im because he's the _only one_ ya all still trust."

"He'd _never_ do something like that!" the genius insisted vehemently.

"Those two _do,"_ Ghost admitted wearily. "An' it _tore the family apart_ until we just straight _stopped believin'_ a _damn_ _word_ out'a their mouths. Granny Chance could say 'the sky's blue', we'd all have to check fer ourselves, an' every one of us'd find out it's actually _grey,"_ she spat digging her nails into her wrist as hard as she could. The habit had a purpose—the human brain cannot always process thoughts and emotions when it's already processing tactile sensations; when experiencing physical and emotional pain at the same time, the emotional pain is dimmed to a dull roar in favor of the physical. It was why so many people turn to _cutting_ never realizing it's an addiction in its own right. Perhaps Donatello understood this because he gently pried her fingertips loose from the wrist already white and marked in purple half-moons, his eyes never leaving hers…nor his hands releasing her still awkwardly clenching hands.

"I'm sorry," she apologized with a self-deprecating scoff, trying to convince herself that her insides weren't warming from the dry, callused skin cradling her hands. _Committed to different people,_ she reminded herself, _this is too close already._ "It's just…imagine dealin' with bold-face lies an' random screamin' fits interspersed by comfortin' an' pointless, heartless words takin' ya back down the notch they just sent ya up. That whole house is fuckin' toxic…most of us can't take it even a few days."

After her long-time fascination with the afghan, her shoulder, and anything but him, Ghost finally met his eyes with a hollow, shuddering sigh, the blue-green conveying several things he just couldn't quite believe: she was dead serious, she wasn't exaggerating, she was actually _understating,_ and there was much more she would take to her grave—not out of shame, but because she truly believed it insignificant in the face of everything else. He shook his head in open disgust that anyone would be separated from their partners only to be put through Hell…even for _family!_

"That's what that call was," she admitted with forced calm, disgruntled by the number of chased-squirrels and spilled-guts it took to get them there. She always _did_ talk too much... "Bob tol'us a while back his cancer was gone, but his _lips were movin'_ so we assumed he was _lyin'._ Ma just heard the truth from his VA doc: the cancer _was,_ indeed, _in remission,_ but it's returned in his spine and other organs. He's gonna start up his treatment again…an' if he goes out'a town for'em, I'm gonna be goin' over to watch over Granny again 'til he's back an' recovered. Sometimes I might have little warning…an' Cold can't cut work to stay with me an' keep my sorry ass calm."

"You're being—but _you're—"_

"—In a committed relationship with a man who fed the cats, paid the bills, an' _still_ left me some houseplants," she finished sternly before he could go further and awkwardly disentangled their hands. "I _feel_ too much, I _startle_ too easy, an' sometimes I tend to forget that Walker ain't gonna jus' randomly show up an' start _whalin'_ on me." After the admitted faults—perceived and not—she practically spewed out the rest in a louder, shriller, and more defensive tone. "Yeah, life's been _shit_ an' it's gonna keep bein' _shit_ 'til the day I die, but that _constant shitstorm's_ made me strong— _apparently_ the strongest person in the family, 'cuz I can go through that shit for a _week_ an' still bounce back after enough _time'n liquor_ …so don't you _dare_ feel sorry fer me, Donatello, don't you—"

Her ever repeated and always overly-aggressive protest fell silent in disbelief and shock—two warm, muscular arms had hauled her up against an almost uncomfortably hard chest, three callused fingers gently petting her hair while their mates splayed protectively on the small of her back. Donatello… _no_ …Donnie…even after she _threw her faults_ into his face and accused him of _pitying_ her…he was…

…oh

no— _oh GOD no!_ Even as her hurt calmed, her ribs shuddered with suppressed tears. _"That's it,"_ the brainy turtle soothed, rightly assuming her reaction was due to suppressed emotions breaking through but clearly mistaken in what those suppressed emotions were. "It always works with Amber," he admitted gently as he rubbed nonsensical patterns up and down her back. "Sometimes she gets so worked up she doesn't even realize what she's feeling until she's—" He fell silent, gave a confused sniff, then hesitantly leaned back to stare owlishly down at the woman in his arms. "You— _You're_ — _"_

 _"Please,"_ Ghost whimpered in humiliation, _"let me go."_ It physically hurt to feel the comforting fingers recoil and the steadying arms release her, but it hurt even more to feel his eyes burning holes in her skin. Was he hurt? Was he horrified? Was he repulsed? No matter what emotion she assigned the gaze, she knew it wasn't nearly as painful as what he must surely be feeling. All he wanted was to offer comfort to someone who was hurting…but rather than just feeling that comfort, that someone was unable to stifle their own reactions to what they'd fought all along—his smile, his smell, his kind words even when she was intentionally pushing him away, his never-ending courtesy outside their evermore frequent fights…he tried to console her and she started putting out 'screw me' pheromones. He didn't speak—perhaps because he didn't know what to say—and swiping her eyes dry on a wadded up tissue from her pocket, she confronted the elephant in the room.

"So." She fought for some sense of composure even with her cheeks streaked with tears. "Now you know." He held his silence, bewildered. "It changes nothing—I—I _care_ about you—have since before you made it to this world—but it changes _nothing_." Defying the tears slicking her face and the comprehension blanching his, she scrubbed the last of her tears away with the scratchy, funky-smelling tissue and met his eyes. "I _love_ Cold—even without paper, we're permanent—and no matter—no matter how much I…care about you—or how fucking _good_ you smell all the time!—I'm taken, so're you, an' if that changes, there will be _Hell to pay!"_

Visibly taken aback by her vehement insistence that her feelings—and her pheromones—could never change anything between them, Donnie stared down at Ghost silently, searching her eyes for answers. "You're not going to try and lead me astray," he deadpanned, his eyes dropping to the wadded snot-rag clenched in her fist then darting away in apparent mortification.

"—an' you'd better do the same!" Ghost insisted seriously. "I'll be honest with you…I've been intentionally pissin' ya off an' wracking my brain for ways to get you home because of how much I care…and having this— _whatever you call it_ —out in the open…" She heaved a sigh through her clenched teeth. "This has a fuckin' one-way _emotional affair_ written all over it!"

"One-way," Donnie repeated, then seemed to think better of continuing. "Do you—do you need a hanky?" he asked instead with an awkward blush. Ghost raised up her clenched fist, displaying her 'tissue' for him.

"Nah, I got—" Suddenly she realized why that 'tissue' felt scratchy and smelled like bleach. _"…my fancy-pants?!"_ she finished in open horror then in a totally-awkward attempt at making the situation somehow _less_ awkward, shoved the wad of purple lace down the neck of her shirt. By this time Donatello was hiding his face in his hand and trying to hide the fact that he was trying not to laugh at her. "If it makes a difference, I'm not some super-creepy purple-panties addict—they're the sole survivor of a multipack that's been shredded."

"Nah," Donnie admitted, finally unable to hold back his laughter. "That's not TMI at all!"

"What?" Ghost demanded in an attempt to up the awkwardness even as she rejoiced at the less serious turn the conversation was finally taking. "I'm a _taken_ woman! I'm _allowed_ to get _laid_ however I fuckin' want, _whenever_ I fuckin' want!" Surprisingly, this made the mutant break out in a loud, goofy giggle-snort, lose his balance, and land on the carpeted floor on his carapace with a loud _thonk_ that only increased the absurdity of the situation.

* * *

A short while after, Cold trudged through the open door to find calamity—his partner sprawled halfway off the bed and hooting with laughter, Donatello curled up in a fetal position on the floor and snorting up a storm, a pile of laundry and her cane cascading out the open door of the closet, and a once-lost pair of lacy purple panties abandoned on the floor by the bed. Something happened while the blond was at work. What that something was, only the two _idiots_ before him knew, but one question was coming to mind. "What'd ya do?" Cold dryly demanded of his significant other, his blank expression cracking at the incredibly awkward _guffaw_ that ripped from her lungs.

"I _fell—!"_ she finally managed only to dissolve even more into laughter.

"—in the _closet!"_ Donnie offered shakily only for a much louder _SHNERK_ to follow.

"H-Hi Honeybuns!" The nickname made the mutant choke at the visual and slowly the hilarity died. When he was finally able to inhale without wheezing or snorting, Donnie realized Cold had found his way over to the woman hanging upside down and halfway off the still-unmade bed and was staring down at her accusingly. Before she could attempt an explanation, her husband snagged the purple lacy panties from their final resting place on the floor—because they _couldn't_ have just _stayed in her bra,_ could they?! Before she could explain he shook the offending garment at her and grunted,

"Toldja they were in the _towel_ hamper." Before his stunned woman could do more than gape, he wadded up the panties, fixed his good eye on Donnie, and sank a basket with the panties and the now-empty hamper using his mostly-blind eye. "Now they're in the _right_ one," he pointed out strolling out the door. The ninja and the nutcase sat up on their sides, one looking for answers and the other unable to given them, and their mutual shrug was interrupted by Cold hollering from the kitchen, "—and hands off my bitch, _Dork!"_ Never one to let a taunt pass unreturned— _or_ leave well enough alone—Ghost shouted back,

"Oi! _Everyone_ knows _yer_ the bitch here, Cold! Don't _make me_ show ya what that _ass'a yers_ is _good fer!"_

 _"Blow me, Asshat!"_ The sarcastic reply—and Ghost's usual retort—made the previously horrified mutant roll his eyes and make his way up off the floor. The two humans' incredibly awkward sexual banter was unending…and he'd hate to see what it would take to stop it.

* * *

 _A couple quick notes:_

 _The song played in the beginning is_ Nural's "Stop me when you've had Enough." _Also, since this was written while I was struggling under a MASSIVE ear infection that was actually making my EYES all screwy, too, this was FULL of typos and screw-ups. HOPEFULLY I caught them all this time. A quick note regarding the news of this chapter, too, so far, Uncle Bob hasn't improved but his doc decided he was too sick to be traveling states to the VA hospital. He's seeing someone in town this time, so I haven't yet been called back to babysit Granny Chance for more than a few hours at a time._

 _As you can see from the end of this chapter, this crack-tastic non-story focuses on the hilarity of a canon-character stuck with someone who writes about them, NOT the already-attached canon character fulfilling the weird-ass fantasies of an even more attached writer. (I will admit no weird-ass fantasies, not under penalty of death.) Thanks for reading and see you in the new chapter!_

 _~Ghost._


	4. Hair

**Short: Hair**

It came out of nowhere. At least, Donnie felt, he was sure he never saw it coming. Something in the small house in the suburbs was different and he wasn't sure what it was, or what it meant. All he knew for certain were a few seemingly unrelated things.

Fact: Cold left for his manufacturing job early, intent on getting his taxes done beforehand. Fact: Ghost endured a repetitive headache-bordering-on-migraine every single day for the last two-and-a-half weeks which no medication or rest improved. Fact: Ghost stormed out without fanfare that morning, hair bound into a single meticulously woven braid, with only a rather cantankerous note stating "I'll be back later, don't blow anything up." Finally, the final fact: there was a stranger in the house—a very heavyset stranger with short, wavy brown hair cut neatly just above her shoulders—a stranger who reeked of some overly expensive salon chemicals and putrid cigar smoke and seemed intent on raiding Ghost's tea stash.

Worried, confused, and increasingly alarmed, Donnie edged nearer to the kitchen in hopes of catching a glimpse of the stranger's face. As she snatched the whistling tea kettle off the stove and poured boiling water over her choice teabag—by the scent of it, an expensive brand of oolong Ghost saved for special occasions and major SHTF moments—the mutant crept past the kitchen to the living room. It hadn't escaped his notice that the stranger brought something with her, a familiar bottle of fine Scotch whisky. Fresh and unopened, the bottle waited on the kitchen counter still cluttered from Cold's rushed pre-work lunch-making.

In the dark, silent parlor, Ghost's cellphone waited helpfully on the scuffed coffee table amidst Missouri Conservationist magazines and junk-mail, probably forgotten…and it wasn't alone. Something sat beside it—something small and dark, wrapped in a plastic grocery bag. The bag drew Donnie, an ominous prickle creeping along the tender scales at the back of his neck. Repeatedly glancing back to the kitchen and the stranger savoring his host's fanciest tea, he reached out for the bag. His lungs refused to cooperate as he carefully untied the fastened handles, unwrapping the contents slowly so as to avoid detection.

* * *

Ghost sighed wearily, staring down into the Celadon hued tea filling her favorite teacup. Normally she saved the Revolution Blackberry Jasmine Oolong— _and_ the vintage china cup decked with blooming herbs—for special occasions or moments when she was in dire need of a mental vacation, but after that afternoon, she absolutely needed the moment. After all, no matter how psychotic her father became in public, the commercials _lie—_ spouting "Calgon, take me away!" _never_ accomplished anything more than earning her strange looks.

 _Her father_ …as if it could ever be anything else. _This_ time, he hadn't thrown any punches or toddler-tantrums…instead he proceeded to make some really off-color remarks about the young man who waited their table—a rather attractive black gentleman with unusual bright blue eyes. Normally, even her father wouldn't bat an eye over the server but the blue eyes completely disabled his brain-to-mouth filter and tore him away from shooting scowls at the lesbian couple a table away.

Ghost shook her head, scowling down at the memory. Honestly, there was enough unrest in the country as it was without her father being a bigoted cad. Sane and civilized men didn't bitch in public about someone's eyes being 'freakier than a rug-munching ninny,' much less at full volume. Years before, he wouldn't have said anything like it either…alas, ever since the knock on his noggin, her father was increasingly prone to bigotry, judgmental behavior, and thoughtless, cringe-worthy rants. Fortunately, Ghost's parents raised her right _before_ her father became a cad…and because of that, she excused herself to the ladies' on the way out, sought out the server then the lesbian couple, apologized for her father's off-color remarks, and personally paid for the ladies' meals and added to the meager tip the elder left for his own meal…all that, and they hadn't even heard him.

Now, frustrated and stinking of her father's cheap cigars but finally free of the weight on her shoulders, she stood in her small, cluttered kitchen, hopeful for at least a short break from reality—just a few minutes to commune with her tea and become more human again before she wound up biting some poor sucker's head off! Apparently, someone up there found this want completely unreasonable and interfered: a blood-curdling shriek rang out in the supposedly empty parlor. She nearly dropped the tea cup in her hurry to arm herself for what she nightmare might find.

* * *

The bag lay open, the macabre trophy inside half-spilled onto the table. Paralyzed with fear and dread, Donnie cowered in the corner, too afraid to even take his eyes off of it. Without warning the stranger appeared in the doorway, bespectacled blue-green eyes wild, one hand clutching a lit lighter and the other a can of bug spray. Primed to fry the supposed home invader with her improvised flamethrower, she froze in the doorway and searched the parlor to no avail. The moment she registered Donnie and followed his gaze to the bag on the table, everything became clear.

"What the flyin' fuck, Donnie?" she spouted in a surprisingly familiar voice and accent. "Ya had me thinkin' someone was gettin' murdered!" Hazel eyes fixed on her, their owner forcing a noisy swallow and glancing around frantically for something he could use as a weapon.

"Who are you?!" he demanded shrilly. "What've you done with Ghost?! Why do you have her hair?!" The woman blinked in surprise, tilted her head in confusion, then, clearly coming to the conclusion that he was serious, she set down her cargo and strode over to the table. Without a single word, she gathered her hair into a stumpy bundle with one hand and held the severed foot-and-a-half braid up to her neck with the other, visibly waiting for him to connect the dots. Sure enough, blinking and staring, he did just that. "Wha… _Ghost?_ That's _you?_ What—what happened?"

"Nothin' out'a the ordinary," Ghost explained with a shrug and passed him a folded up sheet of paper from the bag the braid came out of. "I've got really thick hair—when it gets too long, I get headaches from it, so when I had a headache for a week straight I knew it was time to get it all lopped off again." Donnie looked over the paper in silent bemusement. "Here," Ghost smirked tossing the braid into his lap. "Have a dead animal." To her disappointment, he didn't even notice much less jump and squeal.

 _"Locks…of Love?"_ he read aloud slowly then met her eyes. "You grow your hair out...so you can donate it?"

"Every time," she admitted awkwardly, embarrassed by the discussion. She wasn't normally one to toot her own horn—she believed when you tell others of your good deeds, it lessens the impact of that good deed. Donnie, however, wanted answers, and there was no point in hiding what was obvious. "They make wigs for kids who lose their hair from cancer, an' what they can't use, they sell to raise money for donation. I'm lazy 'bout getting' my hair cut, an' it's not like that hair's doin' any good goin' in the rubbish, right?"

It had absolutely nothing to do with losing relatives to cancer, nothing to do with Uncle Bob's ongoing losing battle with cancer, and even more nothing to do with a certain childhood classmate who died of leukemia. No, it had nothing to do with any of those sob-stories, or at least, so she told herself. After all, she couldn't focus on the reason behind the habit—the reason she continually grew out her hair, struggled and fought to keep it long and healthy, cursed it in one moment and coddled it the next, all to hack it all off and pay postage to have it shipped away. She couldn't focus on the painful truths or she'd go mad from hurt. How could she appreciate a well-executed side-braid while recalling the bald heads of those she lost to cancer? Denial wasn't a healthy reaction to anything, but it certainly could improve one's sense of humor.

"I…guess not," Donnie mumbled, wincing as he finally noticed the braid draped over one crossed thigh. His snout a little crinkled from awkward disgust, he lifted the braid to pass it back to her only to startle. In visible disbelief he hefted the braided length calculating its weight. "Holy heck—this thing must weigh two-point-fifty-seven pounds!"

"Try _three,"_ Ghost countered with a shrug, pretending she wasn't inwardly girly-squealing over his nerdy proclamation. Damn, that turtle was tempting. "Stylist weighed it. I have _stupid-thick_ hair. Used to be worse, too—used to be I had to have my hair thinned out regularly. Now I'm gettin' old an' it's gettin' thinner but the weight's still enough to give me headaches. Just leave the rodent on the table, I'll mail it later."

Without another backward glance, she strode back into the kitchen; sure enough, another pair of feet softly padded after her, bringing a dorky grin to her face. _No,_ she reminded herself firmly, _no touchie! He's taken and so're you!_ She tried to physically shake off the unwelcome thoughts—and urges, unfortunately—and as so often before, wound up reaching for the only thing that made sense in those moments.

Donnie watched silently as Ghost drained the last of her tea, rinsed her cup, and cracked open the brand new bottle of Scotch to pour herself a couple fingers' worth. Although the change startled him, he was glad for it—in moments like this, savoring her whisky with an almost serene smile that was out of place on her face, she looked so much like Amber it hurt. At least with her hair short she couldn't keep it braided…at least without the braids, she might not resemble Amber so closely and it mightn't hurt so much to see her.

* * *

Monday morning—the most irritating of all weekdays, and for Donnie, the day he had to endure the most bitching from Cold about having to work. Honestly, the mutant thought with tight lips, he'd love to be able to work—to contribute to this odd little family who let him stay with them without question. Unfortunately, the pickings were slim…it was either do home repairs for the blind elderly lady next door and risk getting seen by the rest of the neighborhood or assist Ghost with their online sales. At least with him managing the card sales she could somewhat focus on her novel… _and_ getting him home. So far, neither was getting anywhere.

An ominous creaking noise echoed down the dark hallway; a bolt of white and ginger followed—Woozle taking off like a bat out of hell with panic in his copper orange eyes. "Lil' Trai'er," a sleep-graveled voice reprimanded the spastic feline then paused for a loud yawn. "Keep pushin' it, yer stanky ass's due fer a _bath."_ Out of the corner of his eye, Donnie caught sight of something out of his worst nightmares.

Donnie's startled yelp drew a dirty glare from Ghost—a glare that seemed unusually poisonous peeking through the sleep-mussed hair sticking out in every direction. "Short hair don't care," she grumbled at the frozen mutant and shuffled over to the coffee pot. "Suck it."

* * *

 ** _So. Let's just get this out of the way: Yes, I ended up hacking off almost all my hair recently because it was heavy enough to give me headaches again ALREADY. Usually I have it in two braids when it get it cut off - last time they were both over a foot long - but this time it was about a foot in a single braid. HEAVY. Also, yes, the home-invasion bit IS fiction imitating reality...we live in an apartment complex and keeping firearms in the home wouldn't be safe. Therefore, anytime I start feeling like someone unwelcome has made it inside I go lighter-and-aerosol to torch their asses. Fortunately it's usually just Woozle being a creeper. ;D_**

 **WORDS:**

 **So're** \- _So are_

 **Trai'er** \- sleep-slurred _'Traitor'_

 **Yer stanky ass's due fer a bath!** \- _Your smelly ass is due for a bath!_ Yes, we bathe our cats a few times yearly - they're both indoor-only but they're incredibly lazy about grooming and Woozle gets dandruff if he's not regularly conditioned. They're both due for a dip but we're waiting for warmer weather...currently we've hit the beginning of the Spring rainy season and we're too busy drowning to bathe the butts.


	5. Hiatus

**? Just an author's note with update ?**

 **Soft hiatus beginning now for writing on account of IRL difficulties.** For the last couple months everything story-wise I've written has come out like "See Spot Barf" and it's taken a ridiculous amount of effort to even reach THAT level of mediocrity. I'm not gonna subject people to that, especially not you beautiful, wonderful readers who have stuck with me through the worst. (Slow updates, "just-fixed-a-typo" updates, Blocked, Kimber Bryant...you know, really awful stuff that makes readers want to choke writers.)

This is NOT the aforementioned Grief Hiatus. No one's dead (despite Granny Chance's best attempts to the latter) and the impending grief hiatus is still _impending_ \- I just need a friggin' break from pretending my arse isn't on fire from stress. IF, by some miracle, I can manage to transition the ideas in my heart and head into their intended fiction, I'll post them. In the meantime, I'm still apparently capable of flinging crappy sass-posts over on Tumblr, reading others' fiction, and leaving anonymous reviews when a story to touches my heart.

When this is over and I'm capable of writing on a regular basis again, I'll remove this note from my stories, but keep in mind that the hiatus will extend to "Full-Scale" if one of the two relatives dies before then. (again, uncle of cancer, Gran of age-deteriorated health) Meanwhile, be sure to support other writers on this site and please take time to enjoy life for a while.

Hope everyone has a great holiday season (or, if you don't celebrate, a lovely December) and with a little luck I'll be back to irritate y'all on a regular basis by January.


End file.
